Questions about economy.

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nponoBegHuk
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Re: Questions about economy.

Post by nponoBegHuk » Mon, 18. Mar 19, 00:53

Hmm, I don't purposely try to shut down the NPC economy. I don't care for its well being too much would be a more correct way of putting it.

I have to admit, I absolutely hate building complexes. I love designing complexes, planning them carefully, making sure there will be no shortage of resources and whatever, but the actual process of putting factories in place drives me nuts. Dragging asteroids is a pain. Mines themselves look atrocius and no matter how hard you try for them to look decent along with the other factories, it just won't happen. Then, trying to align factories so they look at least a bit tidy, everything just to end up with a spaghetti meatball network all over the sector I'll probably never visit again because of the ugliness of that thing (and 0.2 fps in-sector).

That is why it takes me a lot of time to decide to actually build something. And once it's finished I don't want to be tweaking it anymore. Imaging building a large cube of doom like this https://i.imgur.com/fx3V4T2.png featuring 70-something chip plants, only to find out you can't sell that many chips and end up disabling half of them and having to build "an annex" with different factories that will never match your original design and hurt your FPS even further. In my opinion it would be best to pre-plan the complex with as much effort as you can, and once you're 100% sure on what you'll have, try to think of some kind of layout for your application and build the complex the way you want.

Let's see for example mentioned above complex in Barren Shores. The sector doesn't contain any Ore and a lot of Silicon asteroids. Seems like a perfect spot for a non-military production of any kind. Setting 78 chip plants for the HUB plot seems like an amazing idea, but once the plot is over, you don't need that many chip plants. So, you would either let your freighers get full every once in a while and then perform the "sell on shipyard" trick to get rid of the stock, or disable/destroy the unneeded factories and replace them with other types, I don't know...tubes or satellites.

Other way of doing things would be having resource loop and production loop (chips) separated from the beginning, Merge all the Silicon Mines with relevant number of SPPs and support, and set some CLS freighters to haul silicon/energy cells (or silicon/crystals) over to a different loop with only chip fabs/support, and once you're done with the hub plot, maybe disable some of the chip plants and make your freighters supply loops for other kind of production with the surplus you now have.

But what do you think of the following idea: I build a closed-loop complex featuring not 78 but, let's say, 20 chip plants, and the rest are a mix of of other non ore-consuming factories I might be interested in. In a sector nearby (or maybe even the same sector) I build another "open" loop with just 58 chip fabs (and maybe their support). The idea here is - during the HUB period I disable everything in the closed-loop complex besides chip plants, and feed surplus resources to the "open" complex, to match a total production of 78 chip plants. Once the HUB is over, I stop supplying "open" loop (even destroying it would be OK), and re-enable the rest of the factories I left dormant for the time being. This way I can think about the "final" layout from the beginning. I know destroying from 58 to 170 something fabs would be a waste of credits, but I would much rather prefer that to having non-producing factories lagging up my game.

The same example can be used with Ore Mines for hub plot. After finishing that part, repurposing them for military use would be the best. Say, you found out there is a lot of Ore and Silicon in Savage Spur, and decide to plop a L-mine on each and every of them for the HUB plot, join them with complex kits along with some SPP loops and enjoy your nice Ore income (along with some surplus silicon). Once the HUB plot is finished you might want to repurpose this huge array of mines into some military use, soon to find out that you'll run out of silicon for powering your extra factories before you can use even half of your ore production. Again you'll be presented with a choice, either disable the surplus, or import silicon from elsewhere. Why not plan it ahead and instead of building in a single sector with poor Silicon to Ore balance, choose a couple of lesser sectors for your mining, which instead can be repurposed fully afterwards?

Let's say I want to get rich by building 1MJ shield fabs in President's End. After building 11 of such fabs, the sector's ore supply is depleted, but the universe needs more of my shields! At this point I can either bring more ore from Ore Belt using CLS, or build another complex elsewhere. But I'd much rather have a single closed complex within a Ore/Silicon rich sector for such high-demand ware. If only I knew beforehand what sells in ample amounts and what doesn't, I could plan ahead of time on which sectors to choose for certain wares. As you might have noticed, open loops for some reason bother me. Same goes for mobile mining. Despite having used both technics very successfully in previous playthroughs, I feel well-planned industries can work just fine without relying too much on them. In my opinion, mobile mining takes away all the challenge of complex design - just build as many fabs as you want and get some CLS going. And disconnected loops feel more of a "I couldn't manage to plan this in one chunk so I had to fragment it instead" kind of situation.

And these are the considerations I had when I first decided to open this thread. What I want to find out is, to what extent can I build a decent empire, including completing hub plot within reasonable time, building infrastructure for widely used shielding/missiles/armaments/ammo, getting some nice money makers going, aswell as stocking some commonly needed consumables like sats/drones/ecells using only the simple stuff - mines, factories, complex kits and my arch-nemesis, the tractor beam.

P.S. Argh :evil: , the long post again... I'm sorry. I promise my next post will be some interesting info. Stay tuned!
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Re: Questions about economy.

Post by SirNukes » Mon, 18. Mar 19, 02:34

nponoBegHuk wrote:
Sat, 16. Mar 19, 20:31
I stumbled upon the post you referenced before, but I'm ashamed to admit I have some (lot of) trouble interpreting the code. What does rate % mean? Chance to get consumed?
The rates I gave are % of 1x npc production. You might know this, but: wares have an internal value which is the number of seconds it takes to produce/consume one item at 1x rate (with separate values for npc and player). Unsuffixed factories are 1x, mediums are 2x, large 5x, xl 10x, mines are special.
nponoBegHuk wrote:
Mon, 18. Mar 19, 00:53
featuring 70-something chip plants, only to find out you can't sell that many chips and end up disabling half of them.
Did you disable npc trading on that complex? My 100x chip fab complex seemed to sell out regularly after I completed the Hub, though I suppose there is a danger of saturating the npc traders if letting it run long enough when they aren't getting killed regularly.

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Re: Questions about economy.

Post by nponoBegHuk » Mon, 18. Mar 19, 16:01

SirNukes wrote:
Mon, 18. Mar 19, 02:34
nponoBegHuk wrote:
Sat, 16. Mar 19, 20:31
I stumbled upon the post you referenced before, but I'm ashamed to admit I have some (lot of) trouble interpreting the code. What does rate % mean? Chance to get consumed?
The rates I gave are % of 1x npc production. You might know this, but: wares have an internal value which is the number of seconds it takes to produce/consume one item at 1x rate (with separate values for npc and player). Unsuffixed factories are 1x, mediums are 2x, large 5x, xl 10x, mines are special.
Mmh, OK, this is embarassing :oops: , I still have no clue. I'll look into this over the next couple of days
SirNukes wrote:
Mon, 18. Mar 19, 02:34
nponoBegHuk wrote:
Mon, 18. Mar 19, 00:53
featuring 70-something chip plants, only to find out you can't sell that many chips and end up disabling half of them.
Did you disable npc trading on that complex? My 100x chip fab complex seemed to sell out regularly after I completed the Hub, though I suppose there is a danger of saturating the npc traders if letting it run long enough when they aren't getting killed regularly.
Okay, embarassing again :headbang: , There were over a thousand chips sitting in the complex, i figured they weren't selling. I hit SETA and waited for a while, and they all were gone. Didn't even need to sell them myself, NPC traders were hogging everything like crazy. For the next 3-5 hours gametime the stock never surpassed 100 units. Not sure what happened there initially. Would still be nice to know what is the limit of universe chip consumption.

By the way, any tips on what amount of energy cells per hour to reserve for jump fuel during complex building? time to hit google search again, I guess...
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Re: Questions about economy.

Post by Red-Spot » Tue, 19. Mar 19, 09:26

Just a heads-up concerning the hub. There is no need to take the hub-plot in account. I did not and it did not hurt my game/empire/buildplans.
All it did make me do was start dropping Ore-mines early on, build a chip-hub (40 fabs), set up Barren Shores as a crystal-hub and never really bothered with the hub-plot until I could drop the nearly 45k chips hogged while I was setting up the high-tech hub using all the resources that where building up. Does mean you have to set things up with no return on investment until long after you have the specific part of the hub-plot completed.

I can understand you may feel like dropping an Ore-mine, build some bio and food and feel like setting up a weapons fab to make money or get the weapons you want, but by not doing it you can easily get the hub-plot done and it sets you up with all the resources (except food) needed to produce anything you ever want to make.

On the subject of building tight neatly packed complexes, it is not that difficult or labor intensive when you set up a system. Usually 3 Mammoths allow for a nice 'rolling system' and it gets complexes, huge ones, build with little effort.
Basically I have 3 Mammoths at a SY, get them filled up with factories, send them to the sector to build. One empty, make it go back to the SY, 2nd same after being emptied, 3rd same. By the time the 3rd Mammoth is jumped back to the SY the 1st generally has arrived (or use 4 Mammoths), can be filled up and jumped back to the 'build-sector'.
Having a little trial and error with some factories you will quickly learn that for instance a Cahoona Bakery can be placed at 0.6*0.6*2.0km (Cattle Ranch 1,5*1,5*2 iirc, etc etc) distance from one an other and will make a nice tightly packed bunch of factories that you might still get into with a docking computer but becomes rather difficult to get out of alive again afterwards .... ahem ... :)
I do find it a bit of a requirement to set up hubs in one go so I tend to not add factories at a later stage (except for the rather big weapons hub I have that has been build in stages and even those stages are perfectly lined up).

I feel pretty much the same as you concerning closed loops and had to conclude early on that I simply had to little info to do that. So I went with a 'heavy on resources' approach and at the end I build one big hub (in an out of the way place) with all tech I wanted. Setting things in a way I know where factories are it allowed me to work in segments (first segment was build on for instance 'x= -12', 2nd at 'x= -14' on the same relative y,z co-ords).
Big bonus of the setup is that all tech comes from 1 sector, can be guided from 1 TL/dock/hub and so requires relatively little input afterwards and little risk losing traders.
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Re: Questions about economy.

Post by Altruist » Tue, 19. Mar 19, 10:53

nponoBegHuk wrote:
Mon, 18. Mar 19, 00:53
Imaging building a large cube of doom like this https://i.imgur.com/fx3V4T2.png featuring 70-something chip plants
Did you build this?
Very impressive.

If you can build complexes like this, I feel like every info I can give is completly superfluous... on the other hand, you have repeatedly given the impression of a seasoned X3-veteran who only recently got access to this internet thingy.

Building complexes very accurately by CdrDave (from on minute 8:28):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7wMOm89P_c
Last edited by Altruist on Tue, 19. Mar 19, 17:20, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Questions about economy.

Post by zazie » Tue, 19. Mar 19, 13:31

Also would it be a good idea to buy NPC resources for any reason?
Profits! The player can't compete with EC sold at 12 cr. If you do your math about ROI of EC-production only, it is obvious that the player's EC-production can't compete with the crystal-less EC-production from NPC. Same for Food basics. Player-owned factories can't produce Sunflowers for minimal prize, same for soja beans.

But of course, closed loop production has a psychological profit: build and forget. As I have read you are not caring too much about NPC-economy. Of course that is your playing style and your decision.
For myself I am pretty convinced that on a long term timescale buying local is helping making more profits as the number of buyers of the top-notch products (and drugs) is higher than in a universe where some regions are economically devastated. I am not talking about 5-10 IG-days but >30 IG-days here.
I can't prove it, but as evidence I can refer to the many threads asking how to save the Terran economy or how to get the economy back on track in Aldrin.

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Re: Questions about economy.

Post by jlehtone » Tue, 19. Mar 19, 19:39

zazie wrote:
Tue, 19. Mar 19, 13:31
Also would it be a good idea to buy NPC resources for any reason?
Profits!
There is an alternative interpretation:

Let there be a Farm with Beef. You can obviously transfer the Beef to Bakery. That is the case A.

Case B:
Sell the Beef. You probably get a decent price for it. Then your company accounting assigns the credits to the Bakery and the Bakery buys Beef. Cheap Beef.

The Farm lost Beef and the Bakery got Beef, just like in case A, but in addition Beef was bought cheap and sold at higher price. There is the profits.


There will be times when the NPC cannot provide, but your logistics could fall back to case A-like operation. Besides, the combined stock space of Farm and Bakery can serve as storage buffer.


However, there was a concern about the high end competition. That is somewhat true.

Lets have a player, who never builds anything and never trades anything. No effect on the NPC economy.

Lets have a player, who builds only "closed production". The effect on NPC economy is that the Docks fill up more
=> leads to the NPC Dock Traders to fill up
=> Tech Fabs fill up
=> Resource traders fill up
=> cascade to all NPC. Cheap resources everywhere. Loaded NPC traders waiting to deliver.
=> competition against player getting something sold ought to increase, unless GoD reaps NPC Factories and the Red the Free Traders

Yes, there are big credits per unit in the Guns, but there is only rather limited units per hour of them and in state of surplus the count is less. All the Energy, Minerals, Bio, and Food in the X-Universe are a huge amount of units per hour.


I cannot say for certain that selling only your "own" Guns would net less than trading everything. However, like zazie, I have that feeling. (If we are wrong, then it is our loss, but it seems than we can afford it. :roll: )
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Re: Questions about economy.

Post by nponoBegHuk » Sat, 23. Mar 19, 11:49

Thanks for all the replies. Real life (and the research on Kha'ak Clusters) had me busy over the course of the week, finally I get some time to reply.
Red-Spot wrote:
Tue, 19. Mar 19, 09:26
Having a little trial and error with some factories you will quickly learn that for instance a Cahoona Bakery can be placed at 0.6*0.6*2.0km (Cattle Ranch 1,5*1,5*2 iirc, etc etc) distance from one an other and will make a nice tightly packed bunch of factories that you might still get into with a docking computer but becomes rather difficult to get out of alive again afterwards
I remember making an excel file where I wrote down the relative "safe" distances on X, Y and Z axis of many factories back in the day. I wonder where is that file now. . .
Altruist wrote:
Tue, 19. Mar 19, 10:53
If you can build complexes like this, I feel like every info I can give is completly superfluous...
This is not true, this thread has definitely had many good points haven't ever crossed my mind. Of course I already know a good part of the information mentioned, but don't get discouraged by that - if you feel something should be mentioned, then by all means... you never know when something most obvious to you might be an eye opening for another person :D
zazie wrote:
Tue, 19. Mar 19, 13:31
Profits! The player can't compete with EC sold at 12 cr. If you do your math about ROI of EC-production only, it is obvious that the player's EC-production can't compete with the crystal-less EC-production from NPC.
Hmm... I see where are you coming from. I agree player's production can't compete with NPC production, however, while it surely benefits that particular NPC station economically, I fail to see how this benefits player. If you plop a silicon mine L on a decent asteroid, along with a L-size crystal, food, bio and spp facs, within around 76 hours you would end up recovering your investment, matching the amount of energy cells you could have bought at 12 credits per unit using that sum of money. And from that point onwards, which is just over 3 days in, all the energy cells produced by that loop is free, forever. You can as well drop an L mine on a 0-yield asteroid, even at the production level as low as this, it will pay for itself in 3 days, and for costs of a M-size bio,food,crystal and spp fabs in 37 more days, even though the fabs will be idle 90% of the time. But that's why we merge several mines into one complex, so we don't need to pay for idle factories to this extent. This actually reminds me of something I wanted to discuss, but I'll make a separate reply for that...

If you build a huge complex within a sector without any unused silicon asteroids, buying cheap from NPC will certainly make sense if you wish to expand your complex beyond the maximum sector energy production, but as long as there are unused silicon asteroids in the safe sectors of the universe, there is a little point in doing this, in my opinion.
jlehtone wrote:
Tue, 19. Mar 19, 19:39
Case B:
Sell the Beef. You probably get a decent price for it. Then your company accounting assigns the credits to the Bakery and the Bakery buys Beef. Cheap Beef.

The Farm lost Beef and the Bakery got Beef, just like in case A, but in addition Beef was bought cheap and sold at higher price. There is the profits.
Hmm, this certainly made me think for a moment. Interesting approach. Looks like it can be arranged without too much complication. Still it looks like if you could track oh how much beef you get to sell/buy every hour, it would end up being a better deal to build a separate complex just to sell beef and avoid having to pay cheap at all. The NPC factories selling to you will probably be impacted to some extent, slowing their production and consuming less energy cells, but someone will end up consuming these energy cells anyway. Probably...
jlehtone wrote:
Tue, 19. Mar 19, 19:39
Yes, there are big credits per unit in the Guns, but there is only rather limited units per hour of them and in state of surplus the count is less. All the Energy, Minerals, Bio, and Food in the X-Universe are a huge amount of units per hour.
Certainly, seems like these should sell nicely. I definitely see how most of people responding here are having fun keeping all kinds of trades open with NPC production. It might be worth having a look for me too. If only LordSuch's Sector Planner worked in TC...

I have more issues regarding economy / complex building I want to discuss, stay tuned for a later reply.

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Re: Questions about economy.

Post by jlehtone » Sat, 23. Mar 19, 14:47

The Sector Planner was written for X2 that has static (GoDless) map. GoD (and later Station Build missions) make it necessary to fetch current map status, if you want "real status".

Scorp's Map viewtopic.php?f=2&t=166320 seems to support that. There seems to be a version for X3TC.
The idea is to run a script that exports data from the game and then analyze that data outside of game.

If you want to stay "unmodified", then:
  1. Save "A"
  2. Enable Script Editor
  3. Run the script
  4. Reload "A" and continue your unmodified game
Sector Planner was a "limited version" of the idea, for the data had been exported only once, by LordSuch.

I have used the vanilla "Export Player Statistics" to check what I have built. (It is easier to count the Mines that I have built from a list than in-game.)


I presume that if you export data (with Scorp's tools) on multiple timepoints, then you can estimate the NPC consumption of secondaries.
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Re: Questions about economy.

Post by Red-Spot » Sun, 24. Mar 19, 19:06

nponoBegHuk wrote:
Sat, 23. Mar 19, 11:49
jlehtone wrote:
Tue, 19. Mar 19, 19:39
Yes, there are big credits per unit in the Guns, but there is only rather limited units per hour of them and in state of surplus the count is less. All the Energy, Minerals, Bio, and Food in the X-Universe are a huge amount of units per hour.
Certainly, seems like these should sell nicely. I definitely see how most of people responding here are having fun keeping all kinds of trades open with NPC production. It might be worth having a look for me too. If only LordSuch's Sector Planner worked in TC...
If stuff gets used by the AI (food, EC's), does the engine make it go poof anyway? If not than that calculation should be easy and straightforward ... up until you start trying to take into account how many of the traders buying/selling end up wandering into xenon-space :)
The big difficulty in finding saturation levels for different wares are the unknown's:
  • How much does the engine influence things
  • How much gets lost via destroyed traders

The rest can pretty much be calculated and prioritized:
  • How much is needed of any 'consumable' (if any)
  • How much jumpfuel is needed (at a minimum, if used)
  • Saturate the market with or without AI production in mind
  • Take totals or try to balance/saturate locally

Just thinking out loud. You can prioritize this a 101 ways but you will probably always run into the unknowns at some point.
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Re: Questions about economy.

Post by nponoBegHuk » Sun, 24. Mar 19, 23:21

jlehtone wrote:
Sat, 23. Mar 19, 14:47
The Sector Planner was written for X2 that has static (GoDless) map. GoD (and later Station Build missions) make it necessary to fetch current map status, if you want "real status".

I presume that if you export data (with Scorp's tools) on multiple timepoints, then you can estimate the NPC consumption of secondaries.
I already thought about using ScorpBY's script to fetch currently built factories, but I'm being lazy about parsing the retrieved data to get consumption per hour and such. I'll get into it sometime, though!

By the way, what exactly does GoD mean? Why is it capital D? I thought it was just God like God in the Heavens...
Red-Spot wrote:
Sun, 24. Mar 19, 19:06
Just thinking out loud. You can prioritize this a 101 ways but you will probably always run into the unknowns at some point.
I guess you're right, there are just too many variables to be aware of. There is no way you can know exactly how much of any given ware you will sell per hour with ever-changing universe. I guess X3AP players have it easier - with all the graphs and such. Overbuild any dedicated complex, look how much it sells over time, disable surplus factories to some extent, replace by something else. You will end up with an ugly "annex", but oh well...

On a side note, I decided not cheating with microchips for the hub this time, but I have a dilemma right here. I plan to finish HUB in 1.3 and there are no Crystal Fabs L until 2.0. And I don't want any Crystal Fabs M in my chip complex... Will either build it with Fabs M anyway and end up with a subpar complex, or having to pay millions for replacing a whole bunch of expensive crystal fabs with updated versions.

Maybe the best idea would be to set up a dummy crystal fab array in a different sector and set logistics operation to and from that array while L fabs are not available. After patching past 2.0, complete the chip complex with Crystal Fabs L it needs, and repurpose Crystal Fab M array for something else... :gruebel:
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Re: Questions about economy.

Post by jlehtone » Mon, 25. Mar 19, 17:31

GoD: Global Decision engine (It was introduced in X3R 1.2 or 1.3.)

Each sector has a predetermined set of NPC Factories (and Mines). Some are "on" (present and active), some "off" (do not exist).

Occasionally there are "economic events", positive or negative. I'm not sure whether GoD creates the events, or simply handles them.

Negative event turns a station "off". Poof, its gone! One alleged method for player to protect the NPC is to have a ship docked there.

Positive event turns a station "on". That is not instant; a NPC TL sails from Shipyard to the destination sector with Contruction kit in its cargobay before the Factory is (re)built. (Some Pirates boast boarding Transports to get their hands on rare kits.)


As said, the maximum amount of NPC stations in the most positive economy state are preset in the Galaxy map, but I presume that the Station Building Missions are not in that included in that set.
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Re: Questions about economy.

Post by Red-Spot » Mon, 25. Mar 19, 17:49

jlehtone wrote:
Mon, 25. Mar 19, 17:31
As said, the maximum amount of NPC stations in the most positive economy state are preset in the Galaxy map, but I presume that the Station Building Missions are not in that included in that set.
Personally I think whether you actively take part in the AI's eco may have more impact than how many stations are removed/build by GoD.
GoD generally does not really alter any sector afaik, it may build/remove 1-2 stations and that seems it. Build missions can not be calculated as they are so varied and very game dependent, I've seen Ringo Moon become a very overbuild sector, Seizewell once was the Teladi weapon-hub (they had nearly every weapon and shield that could be build in Seizewell), in my current game The Wall has become a 'ST-nursery'.

If you actively supply say AI's weapons fabs you may actually be able to make as much profit as when you would not and sell more weapons from self-supporting complexes. That is probably a choice that has to be made up front, support the AI and take their output into account, or ignore it and simply allow them to 'freeze' by never being able to unload their goods (well, AI-traders will always try .. :D).

nponoBegHuk wrote:
Sun, 24. Mar 19, 23:21
Maybe the best idea would be to set up a dummy crystal fab array in a different sector and set logistics operation to and from that array while L fabs are not available. After patching past 2.0, complete the chip complex with Crystal Fabs L it needs, and repurpose Crystal Fab M array for something else... :gruebel:
Not sure how you want to go about it, but would starting the game in earlier patches be able to influence the economy?
Also, why not use the script editor to get certain things going? Earning the vast amount of credits needed to build the required complexes is gonna set you back several 100 hours, unless you cheat/'bend the rules' in some other way.
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Re: Questions about economy.

Post by nponoBegHuk » Mon, 25. Mar 19, 17:53

jlehtone wrote:
Mon, 25. Mar 19, 17:31
GoD: Global Decision engine (It was introduced in X3R 1.2 or 1.3.)
What a funky abbreviation. But I guess we can be glad it is not GloD.
jlehtone wrote:
Mon, 25. Mar 19, 17:31
(Some Pirates boast boarding Transports to get their hands on rare kits.)
Don't tell the government *cough* https://i.imgur.com/X5p11Xc.png
jlehtone wrote:
Mon, 25. Mar 19, 17:31
As said, the maximum amount of NPC stations in the most positive economy state are preset in the Galaxy map, but I presume that the Station Building Missions are not in that included in that set.
I like to do a lot of station building missions from pirates but mostly avoid all the other races. Not sure if it matters for GoD engine or not...

By the way, any good estimates on how well drugs and squash mines sell? wonder how many factories to aim for.
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nponoBegHuk
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Re: Questions about economy.

Post by nponoBegHuk » Mon, 25. Mar 19, 22:12

Red-Spot wrote:
Mon, 25. Mar 19, 17:49
Not sure how you want to go about it, but would starting the game in earlier patches be able to influence the economy?
Also, why not use the script editor to get certain things going? Earning the vast amount of credits needed to build the required complexes is gonna set you back several 100 hours, unless you cheat/'bend the rules' in some other way.
Credits are not much of a problem. I'm playing without script editor for the added challenge.
Fast sector selection on the Universe Map | Rock locations for Mobile/OOS mining | Botting for max speed Hyperion | Complete list of ship sources | Capturing smaller ships

My current ship collection:
11 out of 11 *retired* ships found
17 out of 17 *unique* ships found
9 out of 9 *limited* ships found
16 out of 16 *rare* ships found

Hemmingfish
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Re: Questions about economy.

Post by Hemmingfish » Tue, 26. Mar 19, 03:32

nponoBegHuk wrote:
Mon, 25. Mar 19, 17:53
I like to do a lot of station building missions from pirates but mostly avoid all the other races. Not sure if it matters for GoD engine or not...

By the way, any good estimates on how well drugs and squash mines sell? wonder how many factories to aim for.
From my understanding player-constructed stations are completely immune to GoD. Only stations that exist at the start of the game are affected (apart from tractor beam factories I believe, which are a special case because they kept disappearing in previous patches before anyone could buy tractor beams).
Of those factories that it manages, as long as they're shipping product or buying other products or have a player ship docked they won't be removed. There are also rules about re-adding stations but I don't know what they are. In my current game the Solar Power Plant in Jupiter has about a 50/50 chance of being there or not.

As for drugs, they sell extremely well, especially Space Fuel. I have a complex in the unknown sector in TC that becomes known as Avarice using every asteroid and it sells Space Fuel as quickly as it can make it. You can even abuse it being illegal by making a complex in regulated space and freight scanning every ship that leaves.

I've never tried to make Squash Mines so I can't comment on them.

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Re: Questions about economy.

Post by nponoBegHuk » Tue, 26. Mar 19, 14:20

Hemmingfish wrote:
Tue, 26. Mar 19, 03:32
Only stations that exist at the start of the game are affected (apart from tractor beam factories I believe, which are a special case because they kept disappearing in previous patches before anyone could buy tractor beams).
Playing 1.0.1 here, I have to hurry I guess...
nponoBegHuk wrote:
Sat, 23. Mar 19, 11:49
If only LordSuch's Sector Planner worked in TC...
Actually... 8)
Fast sector selection on the Universe Map | Rock locations for Mobile/OOS mining | Botting for max speed Hyperion | Complete list of ship sources | Capturing smaller ships

My current ship collection:
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Red-Spot
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Re: Questions about economy.

Post by Red-Spot » Wed, 27. Mar 19, 00:13

All I get from that is that you are named 'Bob' and I can forget that long difficult to remember name you use here :D
'Ignoramus et ignorabimus'

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Re: Questions about economy.

Post by nponoBegHuk » Wed, 27. Mar 19, 01:17

Red-Spot wrote:
Wed, 27. Mar 19, 00:13
All I get from that is that you are named 'Bob' and I can forget that long difficult to remember name you use here :D
Sector Planner stores its data in an unencrypted xml file, and since not much changed between X3:Reunion and X3TC/AP, with some effort it would be possible to adapt it to work with TC. Introduction of the new race might be an issue, as well as some trouble with solar power plants and such, but still...

Luckily, the Export Universe script works right off the bat, only had to recompile it to update for TC engine.

And yup, Bob is fine! :wink:
Fast sector selection on the Universe Map | Rock locations for Mobile/OOS mining | Botting for max speed Hyperion | Complete list of ship sources | Capturing smaller ships

My current ship collection:
11 out of 11 *retired* ships found
17 out of 17 *unique* ships found
9 out of 9 *limited* ships found
16 out of 16 *rare* ships found

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Re: Questions about economy.

Post by Timsup2nothin » Wed, 27. Mar 19, 20:11

Hemmingfish wrote:
Tue, 26. Mar 19, 03:32

From my understanding player-constructed stations are completely immune to GoD. Only stations that exist at the start of the game are affected (apart from tractor beam factories I believe, which are a special case because they kept disappearing in previous patches before anyone could buy tractor beams).
Of those factories that it manages, as long as they're shipping product or buying other products or have a player ship docked they won't be removed. There are also rules about re-adding stations but I don't know what they are. In my current game the Solar Power Plant in Jupiter has about a 50/50 chance of being there or not.
Yes, but...

While the algorithm removes stations based on its own somewhat arcane ideas about utility, there are other ways that the game engine is removing stations. Making sure that there is economic activity at a station will protect it from the GD algorithm, and parking a ship will protect it even better...but if the pirate job algorithm spawns a pirate task force with sufficient firepower that station is going to disappear, and unless you happen to see it getting pummeled you won't really know why it is gone, you'll just know that it is.
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Not a DiD, so I guess it's a DiDn't, the story of my first try at AP
Part One, in progress

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